Provide shortcut for common part creation use case

Improvement Ideas
1

EDIT: I just found this issue where there is some existing discussion from 5 years ago :slight_smile: Allow creating component from symbol · Issue #548 · LibrePCB/LibrePCB · GitHub

PROBLEM

Many components (particularly ICs) on the market are functionally completely unique, with no symbol or component entity that would reasonably be shared with anything else. They also may or may not share a common package. LibrePCB’s data model (which I do believe to be close to ideal) unfortunately requires the user to create many additional/“redundant” entities in this case.

The current flow to create these components is:

  1. Preemptively write down or have available the part number, description, tags, etc.
  2. Create a symbol with the above parameters pasted in.
  3. Assign the symbol category.
  4. Create a component associated with above symbol with the above parameters pasted in.
  5. Assign the component category and map the pins.
  6. Possibly create the package if it doesn’t already exist
  7. Create a device associated with the above component/package with the above parameters pasted in.
  8. Assign the device category and map the pins.
PROPOSAL

Being able to start with the most concrete entity type - device in this case - without having to specify associated entities upfront could allow the user to create these items inline. Ideally, this common use case would only require creation of the symbol and entering the part number/description/tags once, with all of the entities automatically inheriting this data as appropriate.

2

Yeah I’d say this is more or less covered by Allow creating component from symbol · Issue #548 · LibrePCB/LibrePCB · GitHub and I totally agree this workflow needs to be improved :+1: